“With kind regards to Mrs. Church, in which my wife joins,
“Believe me, dear Church, yours sincerely,
“Scansleigh.”
They spoke for a few minutes of the Viceroy’s loyalty and consideration and appreciation. She dwelt upon that with instinctive tact, and then Church got up quickly.
“I must write to Scansleigh at once,” he said. “I am afraid he is determined about this, but I must write. There is a great deal to do. When Sparks comes out send him to me.” Then he went over to her and awkwardly kissed her. “You have taken it very well, Judith,” he said—“better than any woman I know would have done.”
She put a quick detaining hand upon his arm. “Oh, John, it is only for your sake that I care at all. I—I am so tired of it. I should be only too glad to go home with you, dear, and find some little place in the country where we could live quietly——”
“Yes, yes,” he said, hurrying away. “We can discuss that afterwards. Don’t keep Sparks talking.”
Sparks appeared presently, swinging an embossed silver cylinder half a yard long. New washed and freshly clad in garments of clean country silk, with his damp hair brushed crisply off his forehead, there was a pinkness and a healthiness about Sparks that would have been refreshing at any other moment. “Have you seen this bauble, Mrs. Church?” he inquired: “Bhugsi’s tribute, enshrining the address. It makes the fifth.”
Judith looked at it, and back at Captain Sparks, who saw, with a falling countenance, that there were tears in her eyes.
“It is the last he will ever receive,” she said, and one of the tears found its way down her cheek. “They have asked him from England to resign—they say he must.”